Norv Turner's Ego, dammit

As the 49ers go down in defeat in another game where they have no offense, and the Chargers continue to self-destruct, one can only point the blame finger at Norv Turner and his ego.

He's a great offensive coordinator and was making some good progress in SF. He has two bad and badder head coaching gigs and of course, the huge offensive coordinator run in Dallas in the 1990s. During the head coaching moves offseason, he really wanted to stay in SF for a number of reasons.

So yeah, he takes the head job with the Chargers, who were as primed for the Super Bowl as any other team that didn't make it last year. And they're stinking up the place this year, even though they are virtually unchanged from last year, except for him.

Norv Turner's ego has managed to damage or destroy two teams that he works for. Beware the traps of letting one's ego dictate major decisions in life. It's not only embarrassing but it is dangerous to those around you. Please forward this to Fred Thompson, John Edwards, Paris Hilton, and George Lucas.

Time to start new coach talk in SF

All suffering 49ers have to wonder how the defense has massively improved but the O is still a zero. Much of the blame lays at the feet of Coach Mike Nolan, who likes conservative, non-existent offenses. Now that the 49ers have laid another egg, this time against Pittsburgh, where only one late game touchdown was scored and Gore ran for less than 50 (50?!?!) yards

The Niners loaded up at receiver last offseason and upgraded probably more at that position than any other team (N.E. did have decent receivers in 2006, mind you, the Niners had squat.)

The conservative, no-show offense was a joke when the team was 2-0 somehow. Nolan didn't give any indication of opening things up. Now, as the losses begin to stack up and the offense continues to sputter, people hopefully will start asking tough questions about the franchise that brought the Walsh Offense to the NFL and used to be considered an offensive powerhouse. Either the coach has to change, or it's time to consider changing who is coach.

Fantasy Football Fantasy

ToT is happy football season is back, but as usual, the experience is somewhat soured by two factors:
1. My 49ers are on the other side of the continent, and according to NFL rules must receive only 20% of the coverage that the Jets may get, regardless of how much the Jets have sucked since Nixon was Prez.
2. Fantasy football is back.

Before fantasy football, people rooted for teams in what still is a team sport. But now, the teams have been derivatized so that, as the Couch Slouch has pointed out, people now follow every tackle, sack, run, TD and towel wipe of individual players. This is the equivalent of going from investing in the S&P 500 to investing in just the interest payments from mortgages on houses on Richmond Street in San Diego.

This perversion cannot stand, man.

So let's make it worse. Let's have every fantasy footballer post their standings in a national database. Then fans of fantasy football could create their own fantasy team of fantasy football participants. After enough years of FF, these stat freaks should have reputation, winnings, etc. to keep score with. The FF fans could build portfolios by being able to pick between Chip, the unemployed fantasy seer who always finishes in the top three of the Beerswillers League, or MonkeyAss14, who has a proprietary formula for choosing the most underrated rookie to get the highest fantasy football score.

Why not have fantasy football leagues that aren't player focused, but offense and defense oriented? You could start the Colts offense and the Seattle defense one week, the Ravens offense and the Colts defense. How about an injury league, where you choose the team that will rack up the most injuries in a week? How about a fantasy football league that doesn't follow raw productivity, but productivity per dollar in the contract? You can derivatize everything if there's stats for it, right? You see, we need to have a large amount of investments, so you can diversify your fantasy football investment dollar.

That way, some moron will be rooting for Chad Johnson, Rex Grossman, Manny Lawson, Joe Nedney, the Packers D, the Arizona O, the Ravens offense to score low, the Raiders defense to get blown wide open and have no idea what he's doing. Then he'll have to hire a fantasy football broker to manage it all.

And actually watch the game for once.

Math: Day 1

After two abbreviated 4 day weeks of school, Minnie Trackball has finally had a math class - and math homework! That's 1/9 for those keeping score.

And unlike last year, it sounds like there are boys in this math class, about half.

We'll see if we actually find out about test scores, get forewarning on upcoming tests and other communications one might expect. We have our fingers crossed.